Author: Eva Stachniak
First Published: January 3, 2012
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Trade paperback (464 pages)
It’s kind of hard to find historical fiction on Russian royalty! There’s so much on British ones, especially the Tudors. And what little there is on Russian royalty, it is almost always about the Anastasia and the last Romanovs. So I was very happy to have discovered The Winter Palace, with the tagline, “A novel of Catherine the Great”. Catherine the Great! Now that’s a monarch there should be more novels about. She’s absolutely fascinating. This book turned out to be quite good — not mind-blowingly amazing, but I liked it and enjoyed reading it.
The Winter Palace‘s main character is actually not Catherine, as one would assume with a tagline like that, but about a fictional (I’m pretty sure she’s fictional …) character named Varvara (or Barbara, her Polish name). Varvara is the daughter of a bookbinder father and a mother who wishes to rise up in the world once again. When her parents died, her care was entrusted to the current Empress Of All The Russias, Elizabeth Petrovna, daughter of Peter the Great. This was able to occur because Empress Elizabeth greatly admired Varvara’s father’s work as a bookbinder and promised to take care of his daughter should anything happen to him.
Thus, Varvara enter the royal household initially as a seamstress of some sort, or maid (I’m sorry, I kind of forgot that little detail). She’s not very good at her job, sadly and is bullied by the other servants. Somehow, she catches the attention of Chancellor Bestuzhuv, who uses her to spy on Empress Elizabeth while really she is spying for the Chancellor. Elizabeth, in turn, uses Varvara to spy on Sophie, daughter of a low ranking German princess who she chose to become her heir’s bride. Sophie becomes Catherine later, after converting religions. Varvara finds herself becoming most loyal to Catherine, and helps her spy on Elizabeth, the Chancellor, her future husband and many others as Catherine maneuvers her way around the politics and palace intrigues of the Russian court.
Even though the book says it’s “A novel of Catherine the Great”, Varvara is definitely the main character. I’m not disappointed with having a fictional character as the main character, not at all; but what was disappointing was the fact that the book isn’t really about Catherine that much either. Of course, Catherine was a major character in this book, but I personally felt that it was more like “a novel of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna”. The vast majority of the book covered her reign, with Peter’s reign glossed over and only the beginning of Catherine’s reign summarized.
With that said, Empress Elizabeth herself was also a very fascinating monarch. Really, that entire time period was pretty hectic and full of drama. I did enjoy reading about all of them a lot, but I guess I just expected Catherine and was a little confused to have received so much Elizabeth instead. By the end of the novel, I didn’t feel like I got to know Catherine very well at all. Even Varvara kind of doubts how well she knew Catherine. I suppose that was the intention, to keep Catherine mysterious … or something. I don’t know. I wish I got more insight into Catherine’s thinking in this book, but she’s always so damn secretive.
I think having the fictional Varvara as the main character worked out very well. She is a spy and is able to make comments on a whole variety of characters, allowing the reader to get to know all the court figures intimately. If this was, say, a story strictly from Catherine’s point of view, I would have received a very different portrait of each character I’m sure. Using Varvara allows for a somewhat more objective point of view, as she is not as immersed in the politics as the others. She is not as big a stakeholder as the imperial family, the ambassadors, chancellors, etc. Sometimes the book focused a lot on Varvara’s life, which for the most part I didn’t mind, but there was a period of time in the story where Varvara was away from court and I just wanted to skip it because — let’s face it — I’m reading this book for the court intrigues. Varvara’s own personal story was quite heartwarming though, I must admit, especially her “love life”. She was forced to marry someone she didn’t really care about, but in the end, ended up caring for him anyway. I found that quite romantic and sweet.
I wasn’t a big fan of the ending, sadly. I thought it ended off a bit too loosely. There was pretty much nothing about Catherine’s actual reign, just little snippets, since she took the throne quite late into the book. That’s okay, I guess, but the ending still felt rather unsatisfactorily, with Varvara making a realization, or an epiphany, and withdrawing from everything. On the contrary, I’m not sure what I expected to happen, but these are just my feelings.
Overall, it was a really great read, even if I did make some complaints about it. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in European royalty historical fiction, I think this book would be a great place to start for those of you interested in Catherine the Great.
My Rating: 3/5
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